Amy Polly - Mindfulness at work
Short Biography...
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What is mindfulness?
Okay. So when people ask me to explain mindfulness, I don't often go down the dictionary definition, which I will just briefly mention. So in the dictionary, it'll say something along the lines of paying attention to the present moment with no judgement . Now, that's a nice definition, but for me, it really doesn't explain what mindfulness actually is, and that can feel quite unattainable for some people. How on earth do I pay attention? And so how I explain it is this, mindfulness means awareness. And we are all aware all of the time. We will have awareness, we can't not be aware. And so for me, mindfulness is that brain training. It's that practise of choosing where to put your awareness.
Can anyone practice mindfulness?
Yep. Anyone can practise mindfulness. I always say if I can practise mindfulness, anybody can. I have a really busy brain and I also have a DHD, so I always say if I can, anybody can. It's just about finding out what works for you.
I am feeling overwhelmed at work, can mindfulness help me?
Yeah, absolutely. Mindfulness is really good for managing overwhelm. In fact, it's good for managing lots of different things. And I think this really comes back to the science behind mindfulness and actually that we are cave people living in a modern world, and we experience the same flooding of our bodies with stress hormones when we are being triggered by something that we find stressful. And now we're in a safe environment where we don't have to run away from things like tigers. And so we're just sitting with that stress in our bodies, and we are not managing it. We're not using ways to be able to alleviate that stress. And if we think about those cave people brains that we have, we have fight, flight, or freeze for a reason because it was to survive. And so we are wired that way, and we are used to needing our flight response, for example, to be able to run faster. So in that stressful situation, our muscles are engaged, we have cortisol and adrenaline in our body so that we can run and get away from the tiger, and we use it in that short spurt to get away from that terrifying thing. We still have all of that going on, except we are not getting short spurts anymore. We're experiencing more chronic stress, or it's layering on top of each other. And we're definitely not running away from any tigers. We're probably actually sitting still and sitting with that. And so mindfulness and meditation are really important when it comes to actually alleviating some of that stress from your body. Activating the parasympathetic nervous system, engage in the prefrontal cortex, which is the opposite part of the brain to the fight, flight, or freeze response. And so mindfulness in your every day and sitting in meditation can really help you to alleviate that stress.